In a changing Brooklyn, shop owners decide to call it quits

New York

TO hear some mourners of New York's late, great nostalgia-filled haunts tell it, the soul of the city is crumbling. With every upward tick in the city's property values, the eternal lament goes, another rapacious landlord muscles out a neighbourhood dive bar for a new bank, drugstore or gym.

So what to make of John and Richard Zawisny, the owners of a South Park Slope classic - a Polish sausage and craft-beer emporium called Eagle Provisions that advertises, in blocky hand-painted letters, "Epicurean Delights From Around the World" - that they are selling off and closing for good, and glad about it?